5 Impor­tant Apple Watch Fea­tures That Are Lit­tle Known

12 Sep 2014

On its recent September keynote, Apple finally announced its entrance to the wearable/fashion market with the Apple Watch. However, while we got a good look at this new wrist accessory from Cupertino, Apple left many questions unanswered about this new product.

Thankfully, different reporters got answers to a few of these questions, finding out some important details about the upcoming Apple Watch. We’ve gathered some of these answers in this article, so read long to learn about them.

1. Water-Proof Or Water Resistant?

Being something that you might wear all day, it is extremely important for the Apple Watch to offer at least some kind of resistance to water.

According to reports from attendants to the press conference and to the demo room after it, Apple staff has stated that the Apple Watch will be water resistant, although not water-proof. What this means is that the Apple Watch will be perfectly fine with some water dropping on it when you wash your hands or if you get caught by the rain, but you will definitely have to take it off before showering, swimming or diving.

2. I Am Left-Handed. Am I Out of Luck?

The moment you take a look at the Apple Watch one thing becomes clear: It is meant to be worn on your left wrist and operated with your right hand. That doesn’t mean lefties have been left out though. In fact, Apple has provided the Watch OS with a ‘left mode’ that simply flips the interface upside down to make it instantly usable for left-handed folks.

It gets even better: The watch bands can also be swapped from one end of the watch to the other so they don’t face the wrong side.

There’s a small catch though: Wearing the Apple Watch on your right wrist means the digital crown will be on the lower left side of the watch.

3. Safeguarding Payment Credentials

One of the coolest things Apple showed on its keynote was the ability to use Apple Pay (Apple’s new payment service) with the Apple Watch. What if your Apple Watch gets stolen though? Well, the solution is simple and quite clever.

According to Cult of Mac and other publications, the Apple Watch will require the wearer to type a PIN code to authorize Apple Pay whenever they put it on. Once on your wrist, the Apple Watch uses constant skin contact (via the four sensors on its underside) to authorize any payment. However, the moment the Watch is removed from the wrist it locks the payment feature and the wearer will have to re-enter their payments PIN when putting the device back on.

4. Fancy Chargers

We’ve all seen on Apple’s keynote that the Apple Watch uses a magnetic charger to inductively charge. However, Mac Rumors says that those who buy the gold Apple Watch [Edition], will get it in a nice jewelry box that (surprise!) will double as a charger.

All needed is to just plug the back of the box to a Lightning connector and then place the Apple Watch on the charger pad.

5. Estimated Battery Life

Without a doubt one of the biggest missing pieces of information on the Apple Watch has been its battery life, which seems to indicate Apple is not confident enough about the battery life it is getting right now to reveal an exact number.

However, there is word that Apple is anticipating people to charge their Apple Watches every night, which will place the Apple Watch right in line with the battery life currently provided by similar offerings.

And that’s what there is to it. In the following months Apple will start revealing more information, but it’s definitely nice to know how things are shaping up in advance.

Last updated on 8 Feb, 2018
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